[Gnu-arch-users] Re: name of `backup' inventory type

[Miles Bader]

Robert Collins <address@hidden> writes:
> > How about using a more neutral name for this inventory type, say `local'
> > (and of course keep `backup' for compatibility)?
> 
> backup seems fine to me.
> 
> precious matches what I'd expect of 'local' in terms of behaviour...
> and your .o files should be precious IMO.

Here's the table in =tagging-method:

# category:      copy locally?       safe to clobber?      archive?
#
# junk           no                  yes                   no
# backup         no                  no                    no
# precious       yes                 no                    no
# source         yes                 no                    yes

The difference between `backup' and `precious' is that precious files
are `copied locally' in <some circumstance> -- I'm not sure when this
is, but maybe something like when you use --dir to output to a new tree.

I don't know about you, but I _don't_ want .o files copied, they're
purely local, easily recreated if necessary.  For that matter, I might
indeed _want_ backup files copied, but in any case, they're more
precious than .o files in my mind.

Anyway, the point is that I don't think it's some sort of wacky edge
case to have a file that you really do want to be local, but isn't a
backup file, and the name backup does a poor job of reflecting this.
This is in stark contrast to the category names, which seem to reflect
their typical uses quite well.

-miles
-- 
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